


Gold (and every other color).

by Flymetothelostmoon (MissBianca)



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: Artist!Maya, F/F, Fluff, Freeform, Kinda Sad But Also Kinda Not, Maya is Also a Hopeless Romantic, Minor Angst, Riley is Maya's Everything But We Already Knew That, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 21:21:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4720859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissBianca/pseuds/Flymetothelostmoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re stretched out on the grass under the setting sun with their jackets under their heads, and Maya finds herself looking at Riley despite how beautiful the sky is, just watching her watch the world. </p>
<p>(or, Maya watches the light/Riley move during the day.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gold (and every other color).

**Author's Note:**

> My first GMW fanfic (I just couldn't help myself). Inspired by Maya's quote: "I watch the light move during the day. And you know what happens at 5:30? At 5:30, you turn gold."

At 4:30 AM, Riley is asleep, and her face is calm and passive, cast into a faint light by the almost brightening sky outside. Maya’s heard that the city never sleeps, but she’s never quite believed that. After all, the city is hers, just as much as Riley is hers, and she knows both of them better than she knows herself.

At 4:30 AM, Maya draws Riley quietly in the faint lines of a mechanical pencil to mirror the strange paleness of the world when it’s waiting for her smile.

\--

At 6:00 AM, Riley is smiling in her sleep, as if she can tell that the sun is finally rising. The light from the sky is slanting through the bay window and the clouds are catching it, turning it into a million shades of pink and purple and yellow that Maya’s pencils can’t begin to match. The paper is empty and Maya just tries to memorize the way that all of those colors look cast on Riley’s open face. She thinks the clouds must be jealous.

Riley shifts in her sleep and Maya blinks, turning away to see the colors on her own hands as well. She catches her lower lip between her teeth and realizes that Riley is the sun, and that the clouds would have to be stupid to be jealous of something so beautiful.

\--

At 7:45 AM, Riley is pure energy, racing up the subway steps and into the open air. Her smile is bigger than all of Manhattan, and Maya counts herself lucky to be able to hold on to a piece of the sky, earthbound as she is. As Riley links their fingers tighter, Maya swears to any god who will listen that she’ll never let go.

\--

At 9:00 AM, Riley lights up the entire classroom and Maya has a pen clutched in her fingers as she outlines those big dark eyes over and over again in the margins of her textbook. Maya’s always had a rule that everything looks better under natural light, that the cold lighting in schoolrooms and stores washes out complexions. The day Maya first saw Riley Matthews smile was the day that she realized that her rule doesn’t apply to girls who are sources of natural light themselves.

Maya wastes her time in every class that morning perfecting the lines of Riley’s face until her pages of ‘notes’ and two of her textbooks are filled with fragments of sketches. Everytime she closes her eyes, Maya can see the pieces coming together, and she itches for a paintbrush and a way to capture the sun in Riley’s smile. As they walk arm in arm to lunch, Riley laughs and tosses her long hair over her shoulder and Maya decides that maybe she wasn’t wasting her time at all.

\--

At noon, Riley’s eyes are sad and Maya swears she can see her girl get smaller under the harsh cafeteria lights. For the what feels like the hundredth time, Maya wishes that the cowboy didn’t have such a hold on Riley’s happiness. Helping birth foals on your good ol’ Texas ranch doesn’t make you automatically certified to handle clumsy puppies, and Maya’s tired of Ranger Rick forgetting to think and making _her_ clumsy puppy feel like crying. She knows he doesn't try, but what he can't seem to understand is that everything can be hurtful when you’re sensitive as a rainbow like Riley is.

Riley isn’t even looking at her anymore, and Maya can’t stop fidgeting, shrinking into herself and wishing she was enough on her own to make Riley happy. With a sigh, Maya makes a decision. Pushing her lunch tray over, she pulls out her small sketchbook and purple colored pencil. This has to be perfect.

“Riles?” Maya taps her girl on the shoulder a few minutes later and Riley spins around slowly, the corners of that beautiful mouth turned down.

“What do you want, peaches?” Riley sighs, and Maya’s not sure she’s ever heard her nickname said so sadly or carelessly. It almost feels like a slap in the face.

_It’s too cold without your smile. There’s no light in here when you’re sad_ , Maya wants to say. _I don’t know how to keep going when you won’t look at me._

_I’m still here._

Instead, she forces a small smirk, and shows Riley the drawing. Riley blinks twice, her mouth opening a little bit, then the corners of her eyes crinkle and Maya feels the smile on own her face becoming genuine. Laughing, Riley wraps her arms around Maya from the side. The sketchpad falls onto the table and Maya closes her eyes as Riley makes her warm again.

Fifteen minutes later, Riley’s arm is around Maya’s shoulders as they leave the cafeteria, a slightly bent purple sketch of the two of them with crowns and long dresses sitting on a unicorn clutched in her other hand.

\--

At 2:00 PM, Riley is splashing paint around and ending up with her arms more colorful than her canvas. Maya thinks that the reason that she’s smiling so much at the moment is that she finally has enough colors to paint the way Riley looks at dawn, but as she turns to watch the subject of her painting furrow her brow and tilt her head in the cutest expression, Maya figures she’s probably just reflecting Riley’s happiness.

Maya is mixing pink and purple paint, trying to get a perfect match of the color she’d seen that morning, when Hopalong catches Riley’s eye from across the room and beckons her over. The sun breaks on Riley’s face as she jumps up and bounces over to him, and Maya feels smaller than ever.

Biting her bottom lip, Maya puts aside the pinks and purples and reaches for white instead. The assignment is to paint something that makes you feel at home, and the bay window is a safer subject than Riley is. After all, home is supposed to feel like a place, not a person.

As they leave the art classroom, Maya slips a watercolor set into her backpack, reassuring herself that she’s only borrowing it, not stealing it. She can’t paint Riley how she really sees her in art class without baring her own soul to the entire school, but she can’t not paint her that way either. At home, at least, she can do it alone.

\--

At 4:15 PM, Riley is clumsy and overexcited in the late afternoon sun. She tucks her arm into Maya’s, a wide, sloppy smile on her face, and trips over her own feet on the pavement outside the school. Down she goes, with a surprised shriek, bringing Maya down on top of her. Those dark eyes look around, big and surprised, and Maya cracks a smile, starting to laugh. Riley’s smile comes back tentatively and then she’s giggling too, and they’re just two girls tangled up on the pavement, laughing like idiots.

\--

At 5:00 PM, Riley is sleepy in the subway, all of her earlier energy gone. Her head is resting on Maya’s shoulder and she’s yawning.

“Hey Maya?”

“What’s up, pumpkin?”

Riley snuggles further into Maya’s shoulder and Maya sighs contentedly, closing her eyes.

“Can we go to the park instead of going home?” There is a pause as Riley yawns again. “I want to watch the sunset.”

“We can go anywhere you want,” Maya says sincerely.

“Okay. I want to go to the park.”

Maya kisses the top of Riley’s head. As her best friend yawns still more widely, Maya can’t help thinking that she’s already watching the sun go down, resting right here on her shoulder.

\--

At 5:30, Riley turns gold.

They’re stretched out on the grass under the setting sun with their jackets under their heads, and Maya finds herself looking at Riley despite how beautiful the sky is, just watching her watch the world.

When Riley’s eyes drift closed, Maya sits up and quietly pulls out her sketchpad and pencils.

At 5:30 PM, Maya draws Riley in color, because her whole body seems like a canvas for the early evening light, and black and white wouldn't do her justice. Maya thinks that someday, if Riley will let her, she will take a brush to Riley's skin and paint landscapes onto every inch of her like the masterpiece that she is.

\--

At 7:00 PM, the faint light outside the bay window is coloring the lines of Riley’s face even darker than they normally are. Riley is almost sad but closer to just being quiet, her hands twisted in her lap. As she grabs those hands in her own, Maya thinks that maybe the most beautiful part about the bay window is that when they’re sitting there, they don’t even have to be talking to understand each other.

On impulse, Maya lies down on her side and puts her head in Riley’s lap, looking up to see Riley staring off into the distance. She rests her hand on Riley’s leg, squeezing it gently.

_I’m here,_ Maya doesn’t say. _I’ll always be here._

Riley brushes Maya’s hair out of her face and strokes her head soothingly. Maya shuts her eyes and lets Riley sweep away all of her racing thoughts and impossible wishes until she is nothing, nothing at all, but the warm connection point between Riley’s hand and her skin.

Maya thinks that she can hear Riley’s silent response, just before she drifts into sleep.

_I know, peaches. I know._

\--

At 7:45 PM, Maya wakes up on her back, looking up at Riley. Her collarbone is burning warm where Riley’s fingers are resting and even though her neck is sore, Maya doesn’t think she’s ever felt safer or more at home. Riley hasn’t noticed that she’s awake yet, and her eyes have that look like she’s considering something deep and important. The darkening sky outside is turning Riley into shades of blue, and Maya’s mouth opens slightly as she studies her. Maya thinks that she’ll paint the bay window at twilight, and maybe Riley will be sitting there in her painting.

Just for a moment, Maya wishes that Riley was the one sleeping so that she could draw the way twilight captured her girl in a thousand shades of blue. The thought passes as Riley’s fingers draw little circles on the bottom of her throat and Maya shifts her hips slightly, the soft touches making something in her stomach twist and warm almost uncomfortably. Riley feels her move and looks down, her face morphing into a quiet smile.

\--

At 9:00 PM, Riley’s trying to stay awake as they sit on the couch. The TV lights up her face a different combination of colors every few seconds and Maya is mesmerized by Riley in pinks, Riley in greens, Riley in bright orange. After a little longer, Riley’s head has fallen onto Maya’s shoulder and she’s snoring lightly, a few strands of dark hair falling across her face. Maya smiles and decides she’ll wait a bit longer before moving them to the bedroom.

\--

At midnight, Riley is the same combination of light and dark that the rest of the city is. Maya thinks it looks better on her than it does on the wide dirty streets of Manhattan, and falls asleep with a pen in her hand and her sketchbook open on her chest, the beginnings of a rough drawing of Riley in sharp black lines facing towards the ceiling.

\--

At 2:30 AM, Riley is asleep, and her face is calm and passive, the darkest that it’s been all night. Maya’s heard that the city never sleeps, but she’s never quite believed that. After all, the city is hers, just as much as Riley is hers, and she knows both of them better than she knows herself.

At 2:30 AM, Maya draws Riley quietly in the faint lines of a mechanical pencil to mirror the breath-catching silence of the world cast in darkness when it’s waiting for her smile.

**Author's Note:**

> (Maya's favorite artist is the one that created Riley.)
> 
> Please tell me what you thought! I'm skyesimmmons on tumblr if anybody's interested.


End file.
